'Mouse & Lion' by Rand Burkert

No, this isn't the story you think it is. Note that the top billing is reversed. Rand Burkert — who wonders whether Aesop was an apocryphal African storyteller — suggests that different Aesop's fables show the lion sometimes as a tyrant but sometimes still teachable. Few artists can make the coats of both a lion and a mouse call out equally for a touch, but Nancy Ekholm Burkert's careful pen-and-ink drawings and watercolor washes do just that and help us enjoy the newness.